"The People Who Live Inside" by Sarp Sozdinler

"My mother called me on a Tuesday afternoon to say that my Uncle Frank had been seen climbing into the old grain silo at the edge of town again."

I’ve published a handful of short short pieces by Sarp on HAD over the last few years, but I think this might be the first longer story I’ve read by him. And what a treat it is. One of those submissions that had me hooked from the very first page — the confidence in the prose; the realness of the world; the slightly askew angle of looking at said world, that piques my interest and pulls me in, getting its hooks in me while I keep reading, both curious where the story is going to take me while also just enjoying the way it is taking me there.

I don’t know how authorial context may tweak a reading of the story (I don’t always love it myself; I really like to read and enjoy a story purely on its own terms), but I keep thinking about some of Sarp’s answers for our accompanying interview, forthcoming next Tuesday. In his first answer, he notes, “As a writer from Turkey who grew up on Hollywood and American literature, I feel irreversibly imperialized by the mythic simulation that is America, and I often find myself trying to replicate this deeply ingrained image where reality and icons merge seamlessly. Everything about the culture at once baffles and amazes me…”

There’s something about the ways that bafflement and amazement come together — in much of Sarp’s writing, but this story especially — that I find incredibly unique, interesting, and ultimately kind of magical. I hope you find some of that magic in here for yourself, too!

—Aaron Burch

---

art by Nina Semczuk

“The People Who Live Inside”

My mother called me on a Tuesday afternoon to say that my Uncle Frank had been seen climbing into the old grain silo at the edge of town again. The town in question is Buckle, Pennsylvania, which my mother likes to call “the only place in America with two stoplights and six Dollar Generals.” She called my cell and left a voicemail, then texted, then sent an email that read, “If you are alive, please call. Bring work boots. Bring that thing you found at the flea market. You know the thing.”

I’d found the “thing” last Thanksgiving: a coil of rope and a battered yellow miner’s helmet, still faintly dusted with someone else’s sweat, wedged between a milk crate full of World Book Encyclopedias and a plastic baby Jesus with one arm missing. I’d bought it for five dollars from a man with a glass eye who told me, “This helmet’s seen more darkness than you could pack into a truck bed, son.” I hadn’t told my mother about the glass eye part.

I packed the helmet, boots, and the coil of rope in a grocery bag and got in my car. The drive to Buckle from where I live now—Bryn Mawr, near the commuter line, with its sour wind and artisanal bakeries—is two hours if you avoid traffic, three if the universe is in a foul mood. The highway hummed under me, endless lanes of people going somewhere or getting away. My mother’s text sat open on the seat beside me, the font slightly too large, all the words bunched together.

She called again as I pulled off the exit. “Where are you?” she asked, like I was late for a flight.

“Ten minutes out,” I said. “What’s the situation?”

“Situation is, it turns out your uncle went up the silo with a plastic bag and a pillow. The sheriff came and shined his flashlight up the ladder and yelled, ‘Frank! I’m not climbing up there, come down or I’ll write you up for trespass again!’ But Frank didn’t come down, so the sheriff left. Now the neighbors are talking and I have to do something or else it’ll be a whole thing at choir practice.”

“Is he still up there?” I asked.

“He’s not answering. Some pigeons came out but not Frank.”

The phone went quiet, then she said, “He took a casserole up there, too. Cold, from the fridge. Tinfoil and everything.”

I wanted to ask why—why anyone would take a casserole and a pillow up into a seventy-year-old concrete silo with its rusted ladder and angry pigeons. Instead, I said, “I’ll be there in five.”

I’d found the “thing” last Thanksgiving: a coil of rope and a battered yellow miner’s helmet, still faintly dusted with someone else’s sweat… I’d bought it for five dollars from a man with a glass eye who told me, “This helmet’s seen more darkness than you could pack into a truck bed, son.”

The road into Buckle curves past the old feed store, the Super 8, and the mile-long stretch of derelict train tracks that every bored high school kid in the county has graffitied. I passed a billboard advertising a “Chicken Plunge” (a fundraiser for the swim team, the chicken suit mandatory), and a hand-painted sign for “Cut-Your-Own Christmas Trees, Open May-December.” Buckle never changed except by becoming more like itself.

The silo appeared over the rise, pale gray against the sky, streaked with years of rain and lichen. My mother’s minivan was parked beside it, doors flung wide. She was sitting on a folding lawn chair with a Tupperware container in her lap, the kind of posture that said she had already decided whose fault this all was. Her hair was pulled into a bun, the color of new pennies in the sunlight, and she was wearing her “Bring Out Your Corpses” T-shirt.

“Don’t say it,” she said as I stepped out.

I set the bag down. “Say what?”

“Say this is a bad idea.”

I shrugged. “It is, but you know damn well that’s not going to stop either of us.”

She handed me the Tupperware. Inside: cold macaroni, green beans, something that might have been ham. “In case you get hungry up there.”

“Thanks.”

She nodded at the silo. “He went up around eleven. It’s after three. That can’t be good.”

I looked up. The ladder clung to the concrete like a metal spine, some rungs bent, all of them covered in what I hoped was only rust. I could hear pigeons rustling in the shadows high above.

“Did he mention any reason why?”

She shook her head. “Something about wanting to be closer to God. Or farther from everybody else. Maybe both. You know your uncle.”

She stood and hugged me, tight and short, then stepped back, arms folded. “Don’t fall.”

I pulled on the helmet, laced my boots, and slung the rope across my chest. The first rung was greasy and loose, the metal cold against my palm. I climbed. Halfway up, I started to smell the inside of the silo—a mix of old grain, dust, and pigeon shit, dense and claustrophobic.

At the hatch, I paused and called, “Uncle Frank? You up here?”

Silence. Then more silence. Then the sound of metal shifting, the tiniest echo, then a voice, unmistakably Frank’s, gravelly and thin: “What the hell took you so long?”

I pulled myself through, into the high, dim cylinder of the silo, shafts of light cutting down from holes in the roof. Pigeons scattered, wings thumping the air. Frank sat on a pile of grain sacks, a blue plastic pillow propped behind his back, a half-eaten casserole balanced on his knees.

“Hey, kid,” he said. “Did you bring the helmet?”

I tapped the brim. “Vintage.”

He scoffed. “That thing’s probably younger than both of us. You check it for spiders?”

“Let’s not talk about spiders yet.”

He grinned, all teeth. “So your mother sent you, huh? The family intellectual for the rescue.”

I sat across from him, brushing pigeon feathers off a crate. “Mom said you were having a crisis.”

Frank poked at the casserole. “Did she mention the parade?”

I looked at him blankly.

He set the casserole aside. “Well, that’s the problem. Buckle’s bicentennial parade. They’re asking me to be the Grand Marshal.”

“Isn’t that an honor?”

He snorted. “It’s a trap, is what it is. Grand Marshal’s the only donkey who got to ride on the float, wave at all the people he owes money to, and shake hands with every idiot who’s ever been in my house. And then I have to give a speech at the bandstand. I haven’t written a speech since 1987, and that one was about how to fix a leaking septic tank. Nobody clapped if you were wondering.”

I laughed, the sound echoing up the curved walls.

Frank closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the pillow. “I just needed some time away, okay? Up here it’s quiet. The pigeons don’t talk, don’t ask a lot of questions like your mom. They shit on you either way.”

He opened one eye and looked at me. “You ever want to just disappear?”

I hesitated. “Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes.”

“Good.” He nodded, satisfied. He pulled a flask from his jacket and offered it. “Gin. Might as well.”

I sipped, the burn reminding me of Christmases long past, when Frank would show up with grocery bags of questionable gifts: used crossword puzzle books, unlabeled VHS tapes, bottles of Canadian Club with dust still on the cap.

He sighed. “I miss your dad.”

“I know.”

We sat together at the bottom of the silo, the silence thick but not empty. Light moved across the walls. Frank dozed, then woke, then dozed again.

When I finally said, “Let’s go down, Mom’s worried,” he looked up at the high rafters and replied, “Just a few more minutes. Then you can play the hero.”

I nodded and leaned back, letting the chill of the stone work its way through my jacket.

It was only when we were halfway down the ladder, sun bright on my neck, the ground swinging below, that Frank said, “You ever feel like there are people living inside you? People you used to know, or want to be, or maybe just voices from somewhere else, moving the furniture around in your head?”

I thought about the people I carried: my father, mostly; sometimes Parker, my old boyfriend; sometimes my mother’s laugh when she thought nobody could hear. The people who’d gone but weren’t really gone.

“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

Frank nodded, and for the rest of the climb he didn’t say another word.

art by Nina Semczuk

That evening, Mom made a pot roast and the three of us ate in the kitchen, the radio on low, the news murmuring about wildfires out West, a new toll on the turnpike, a town in Georgia where someone had stolen all the street signs in the night.

Frank ate quietly, scraping the gravy from his plate. My mother kept sneaking glances at him, as if making sure he wouldn’t vanish between forkfuls. After dinner, I washed the dishes while she made tea.

She whispered, “You think he’s okay?”

I shrugged. “He’s Frank. I think he just needs not to be looked at for a while.”

She nodded, then added, “He’s sleeping here tonight. Just so you know. He left his house in a state. I found a dead bird inside.”

When Frank went to bed, Mom sat across from me, the kitchen suddenly too large, too bright. She took a long drink of her tea, eyes unfocused. “You think I should have done something different? When your father got sick, when Frank got divorced, when you left for college?” She sighed, deep and loud. “I can’t help wonder about that sometimes.”

I said, “What could you have done?”

She shook her head, smiling sadly. “I don’t know. That’s the thing, isn’t it? You never know until it’s all too late.”

*

The next morning, I woke to the smell of burnt toast and the sound of my mother arguing with Frank about the parade. “It’s just one afternoon for Chrissakes!” she was saying. “All you have to do is wave and look happy!”

Frank, looking considerably redder and more puffed-up than the day before, mumbled something about public humiliation, about reputation, then slammed the bathroom door behind him. Mom looked at me, exasperated.

“Maybe he’ll come around,” I said. “Give him time.”

She pointed a spatula at me. “You’re not leaving until he does.”

I grabbed the car keys from the stand and petted Felony the family tabby on my way out.

Frank’s house sat at the end of Palmer Street, beside the old VFW hall and the church parking lot, the paint peeling off in wide strips. The roofline sagged like a tired sigh, and the grass was dotted with the bright plastic tags that showed the gas company had been through again. On my way down here, Mom had sent me over with a list of groceries and a picture of where I could find his spare keys, “in case he comes to his senses and decides to go home.”

Frank’s living room had the thick, lived-in smell of newspapers and dust, cut with the sting of old aftershave. A plastic-wrapped sofa sat under the window, and a coffee table heaped with mail: bills, yellow flyers for pizza and church suppers, a few hospital appointment cards. The silence was dense. I opened the fridge and found half a chocolate cake, an expired bottle of milk, three sticks of butter, and a dozen eggs, each marked with a red “X.” His freezer was stuffed with what looked like ice packs and frozen bread heels. No dead birds in sight yet.

I wandered from room to room, touching things as if I might find some clue about Frank’s abrupt transgression. Why the pillow, the casserole, the stubborn refusal to be the Grand Marshal? But mostly what I found were objects that made me think of childhood afternoons: the bowling trophies (FRANK—BUCKLE LANES—1983), the worn baseball glove, the copy of A Farewell to Arms with an address label stuck inside the front cover. My own name, written in my father’s careful block print: “If lost, return to:” followed by our old address, long since sold.

I sat down in the yellow armchair and tried to imagine Frank as a younger man—my father’s shadow, tall and wild, always running just ahead or just behind. The stories my father used to tell about their childhood: breaking into the school gym to play basketball after hours, “liberating” watermelons from Mr. Dunlap’s farm, sneaking into the closed wing of the hospital just to see if the ghosts were real. My mother called them “the lost boys.” They both joined the army after graduation, both came home with their own quiet wounds.

Frank never married again after Linda left him. My father stayed, as much as anyone stays. I wondered which of them haunted the other more.

After an hour of looking and not finding anything, I locked up and brought the groceries back to Mom. She was on the porch, drinking iced tea, watching the neighbor’s kids chalk hopscotch on the sidewalk.

“Find anything?” She looked at me with a mixture of curiosity and resignation.

“Just mail,” I said. “And an unwholesome amount of butter.”

She laughed. “He eats a lot of toast when he’s blue. Your father used to joke that Frank alone was what kept the dairy in business.”

I set the groceries inside, watched her for a moment, the way she stared at the road as if expecting someone. “You ever think about leaving him behind?” I asked.

“Leaving Buckle?” She smiled, slow and tired. “When your father was alive, we talked about it. Moving out West. Maybe a place with a big sky, no neighbors, no past.” She exhaled a big sigh. “But the truth is, every place is like Buckle if you live in it long enough.”

She squeezed my hand. “You want to go for a drive? Parade practice is tonight. I need to see how bad it’s all going to go.”

art by Nina Semczuk

We drove past the school, the supermarket, the ball fields gone to weeds. Mom narrated the tour, pointing out who’d moved (“Mrs. McAvoy left for her daughter’s in Harrisburg—said she’d never come back if she could help it”), who’d died (“The hardware store’s closed now, old Don finally keeled over in the back aisle, clutching a pipe wrench”), who’d split up, who’d returned. I half-heartedly hoped that I would bump into Parker, get a glimpse of him—that’s if he still lived in Buckle.

At the town green, a loose crowd of volunteers was assembling floats: plywood platforms on borrowed trailers, all festooned with crepe paper, bunting, and ambitious attempts at historical reenactment. A kid in a tricorn hat and neon sneakers chased a girl dressed as “Buckle’s first teacher,” while the high school marching band tuned their instruments and eyed each other warily.

On the biggest float—a flatbed with plywood steps and a faded American flag—stood a blown-up portrait of Frank, stapled to the railing, his face mid-blink, looking at once presidential and profoundly confused.

The parade organizer, a woman named Mrs. Callahan who wore pearls even to mow her lawn, approached us as we got out of the car. “Oh, Mary!” she sang. “We’re so happy you’re here! Where’s our Grand Marshal?”

Mom smiled tightly. “He’s resting. Long day.”

Mrs. Callahan did not blink. “Well, tell him we expect him at dress rehearsal tomorrow night, without fail. The speech doesn’t have to be long, just a few words about community, or history. Something inspiring. Maybe a little joke to lighten things up? God knows people are tense these days.”

Mom nodded. “I’ll pass the word.”

We stood together, watching the local cheer squad practice cartwheels in the grass. Two men from the fire department carried a wooden cut-out of a cow (“Buckle—Once Home to Four Dairy Farms!”), and a clutch of church ladies arranged folding chairs for the “Pie Eating and Pie Judging—No Experience Necessary!” contest.

Mrs. Callahan took my arm. “Oh, you look just like your father. You’ll ride in the parade, won’t you, dear? We need more young faces around. You can sit with Frank if you want. Steady his nerves.”

I nodded. “If he’s there, I’ll be there.”

Her lips curled, hesitating at the if. “It’s going to be such a wonderful day,” she then beamed as if to chalk it all up. “Two hundred years of Buckle! That’s a legacy right there.”

Later, Mom and I got back in the car. “I hate parades,” she said, more a sigh than a confession. “I hate floats, I hate speeches, I hate crepe paper. I hate hate hate it all.”

I laughed. “Why do we do any of it then?”

“Fuck if I know.” She shrugged. “Habit. Loneliness. Hope.” She turned to look at me. “Frank can tell you all about it.”

*

Frank returned to the house late that night, letting himself in with the old spare key hidden in the fake rock by the porch. I heard him fumbling with the lock, then the thump of his boots in the hall.

I found him in the kitchen, hunched over the table, smoking the last inch of a cigarette and staring at the shadows on the wall.

“You come back to the land of the living?” I asked.

He shook his head, exhaling. “Just needed some air. The pigeons up there—they’re not so bad, but they don’t tell good jokes, either.”

He poured a glass of water and handed me the bottle. “More gin?”

I declined this time.

He nodded at the hallway. “She worried?”

“Always.”

He took another drag, tapping the ash into a mug with a faded smiley face. “This town gets smaller every year. Like someone keeps closing all the doors and windows. You notice that?”

I sat across from him. “Yeah. I notice.”

He looked at me, eyes rimmed with red. “You guys got out. You got lucky. You got away.”

I took his plural take in stride, letting the mention of Parker dissolve in the stuffy air between us. “I live in a shoebox near the train. Lucky’s not the word.”

Frank grinned. “That’s still further than most. Every time I tried, I ended up back here, fixing pipes and smiling at people I barely knew.”

We sat quietly, the kitchen clock ticking, the hum of the refrigerator the only sound between us.

“You ever wish you’d gone?” he asked.

I thought about Parker, about the life I’d almost built elsewhere with him—Seattle, maybe, or Austin, somewhere without winters like Buckle’s.

“Sometimes,” I said. I thought of Mom for some reason. “But then I remember I’m still me, no matter where I go.”

Frank finished his cigarette and stubbed it out, coughing. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? The people you bring with you.” He looked at me. “No matter where you go.”

He left for bed without saying goodnight.

I was restless the whole night. The house was too quiet, the kind of quiet that soaks up all the bad memories. I tried reading in bed, but the lamp felt too harsh. Mom’s snores drifted down the hall in gentle waves. After an hour of staring at the ceiling, I got up, pulled on the first sweatshirt I could find in the dark, and slipped out the side door into the night.

The air was thick with summer, heavy and wet. I let the door shut softly behind me and

started walking the blocks I hadn’t walked since high school. Past the dark hulk of Frank’s truck parked under the maple tree, past the neighbor’s garden with its drunken tomato cages, past the old hardware store that always smelled of dust and fertilizer, even in the dark. The streets of Buckle feel hollowed out at night, like a set after the play is done. Porch lights burned in scattered patches, moths spinning in slow ecstasy. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. A single train passed, horn low and mournful.

I stopped outside Parker’s old house, which still looked mostly the same: green shutters, peeling a little; the porch swing creaking gently in the breeze. Someone else lived there now, a family with two little girls and a plastic slide in the yard, which looked messier than I remembered. The crabapple tree where Parker used to balance his bike was gone. I stood in the patch of grass under the old sycamore, remembering how we’d sneak out after midnight, meeting halfway between our houses. The rough bark still held the ghost of our initials: an uneven B + P, the plus sign mostly filled with moss.

There was no poetry to any of it. Not really. We’d been idiots, Parker and I, but devoted ones at that: boys who spent hours drawing maps of fake islands, inventing languages, arguing the rules of board games until someone cried and stormed off. When we got older, our fights changed. We threw stuff at the wall or in each other’s faces. Once we held hands under a blanket while watching some war movie, then didn’t speak for a week.

I remembered one sleepover when he dared me to eat a spoonful of mustard and tried to kiss me after. Our teeth knocked and we laughed. He called me a coward and wouldn’t look at me for the rest of the night. Later, in the dark, he asked if I’d ever want to swap bodies, just for a day, “to see if my skin fits you better than it fits me.” We were thirteen. I told him to shut up.

Once, after we broke up, he sent me a postcard from a gas station in Maryland, said the ocean looked exactly how we drew it on our fake maps. He said he missed arguing with me.

A car rolled by, slow, the driver eyeing me as if I might be casing the place. I waved awkwardly, as if that made anything better. I took the long way back, tracing new routes, letting my mind wander to other lives, other arguments. By the time I made it to the porch, the first birds were tuning up. I let myself in, careful on the steps, and sat in the dark kitchen, eating a cold piece of Frank’s leftover toast.

When I finally slept, it was restless and sharp-edged, but at least it resembled something like peace.

art by Nina Semczuk

The next morning, Frank went missing again. I woke to the smell of casseroles and the sound of my mother pacing the hallway, her slippered feet slapping the tile with determined fury. I found her in the kitchen, clutching the landline phone, staring at the spot where Frank’s boots had been lined up the night before. The old canvas duffel he sometimes used for fishing trips was gone, too.

“He didn’t take his phone, just a bag and a thermos. I thought we were past this.” She pressed the phone to her chest and sighed. “I called the Marshalls. I called the VFW. Nobody’s seen him. The parade starts in two hours and our Grand fucking Marshal has vanished.”

I looked out the window, half expecting to see Frank out there in the yard, cigarette smoke trailing, maybe already tinkering with the lawnmower as if nothing were amiss. But the grass was empty except for Felony the cat, who yawned in the sunlight and rolled over as if this were all perfectly ordinary.

“Should we drive around?” I asked her.

Mom shook her head. “If we start looking, he’ll hide longer out of spite.”

She sat at the table and picked at the casserole. It was the meat-filled kind, Frank’s favorite. “If he misses this parade, Mary Callahan will have a stroke. Or worse, make me wear the sash myself. Do you know how many of my pies that woman has thrown out this week because they didn’t look ‘patriotic enough’?”

I poured coffee and sat beside her. She pulled her phone out again and dialed Frank’s mobile, pacing the linoleum with her sock feet sliding. Voicemail. She tried his house phone. No answer. She looked at me like this was all my fault.

“You think he went back to the silo?” I said.

She pressed her lips together. “If he’s up that godforsaken ladder again—”

I sat up and grabbed my keys before she could finish, along with the miner’s helmet, just in case.

*

Outside, the morning air was already bright, cicadas buzzing in the trees. I drove past the grain silo, half-expecting to see Frank’s head poking out the hatch, but the ladder was empty, pigeons sunning themselves along the roofline.

Next I swung by his house. The blinds were drawn, mailbox stuffed with takeout menus and a flyer for “FREE TIRE RECYCLING.” I let myself in with the spare key, calling his name through the stale air. No Frank, just the faint smell of cigarettes and the old radio left on in the living room, a weather report humming to no one.

Later, I drove by the playground where Frank sometimes sat with his coffee, pretending to read the paper but mostly watching squirrels riot in the trash cans. I checked the creek bridge too, where he used to fish for suckers with a piece of string and a chunk of hot dog, a ritual he claimed was “for the soul, not the supper.” At each stop, I called his name, the sound bouncing off the concrete and coming back empty.

Back at Mom’s, she was sitting on the steps, fanning herself with the parade program, her eyes glassy with worry and something like resignation.

“Nothing?” she asked as I approached.

I shook my head. “He’ll turn up. He always does.”

She gave a snort. “Well, if he wants to skip his own parade, that’s on him. Let Mrs. Callahan march down Main Street by herself.”

I sat beside her, watching as the first floats trundled past the end of the block, kids in paper hats waving handfuls of candy, the high school band gathering in awkward clumps. It was almost time for the Grand Marshal’s car to roll up, top down, sash draped across the empty seat.

Then, just as I was about to call it—about to suggest we go back in and skip the whole spectacle—Frank came ambling around the corner, thermos in hand, face flushed from the heat and maybe from something stronger.

He didn’t say a word as he walked up the driveway. Just set the thermos on the porch and looked at us, as if we’d been the ones who’d disappeared.

Mom stood, hands on her hips, trying to look stern but failing. “You almost missed your cue,” she said, her voice surprisingly soft.

Frank just grinned, eyes crinkling at the corners. He handed me the thermos, smelling of cheap gin and coffee, and shrugged on his sash. “Let’s get this over with.”

The floats lined up on Main Street, engines idling, kids running between them with arms full of candy. Frank looked confident and marshal-like in the passenger seat of the Grand Marshal’s convertible, a 1971 cherry red Pontiac, borrowed from the town undertaker. He wore a cheap plastic sash and a sunburned scowl. Mom hovered at the curb, her eyes fixed on Frank like a surveillance camera.

Mrs. Callahan appeared, clipboard in hand, beaming. “Frank! Are you ready? Speech in your pocket? Smile on your face?”

Frank grunted. “Let’s fucking parade.”

I sat on the back of the convertible, feet dangling, waving at neighbors, former teachers, old friends and their children—faces I hadn’t seen in years, all blurring together in the bright, relentless sun.

As the car pulled away, the band struck up “God Bless America,” and the crowd cheered. Frank’s wave was a limp approximation, his eyes never quite landing on anyone in particular.

At the reviewing stand, the car stopped. Frank climbed out, moving like a man on the gallows. Mrs. Callahan handed him the microphone. He looked at it for a long moment, then out at the crowd. The sun glinted off the flag, and a baby cried somewhere down the line. He cleared his throat. “Two hundred years, and Buckle’s still standing. For some of us, it feels like we’ve been here for all of them.” A ripple of laughter. “Either that means we’re doing something right, or it just means we’re too stubborn to die.”

He paused, staring at the faces, then at me, then at Mom.

“I’ve lived here long enough to know most of y’all motherfuckers owe me money, casseroles, or apologies. Maybe all three. You keep thinking you’ll wake up one day and find me dead. I keep thinking I’ll wake up one day and somebody will have put a statue of me outside the hardware store, the way I deserve it.” He shrugged. “I don’t have much to say, folks. I don’t have a road map or any wisdom to share. The Lord knows I’m not good with speeches anyway. But I’ll tell you this—if you ever get the chance to leave, fucking go. Go see something else. Don’t ever come back. And take the people who live inside you with you—make room for them, but don’t ever let them take on the wheel.”

He handed the microphone to Mrs. Callahan, who stood stunned for a second before leading the crowd in awkward applause. Frank sat mutely beside me, staring straight ahead. The cheers and band music faded as the convertible rolled away.

*

That night, Mom made lemonade and sat with Frank and me on the back porch, listening to the demented roar of cicadas in the trees.

“You did just fine,” she said, turning to Frank. “I’m proud of you.”

He scoffed. “Nobody expects poetry from a retired plumber, anyway.”

She smiled, then leaned her head on my shoulder. “The word has it they’ll ask Mr. Callahan to be the Grand Marshal next year.” I felt her hand grip mine, strong and steady. “That’ll be a spectacle.”

We watched the stars come out, one by one, until the dark was full of small lights, each one a memory, a promise, a ghost.

I thought about the people who lived inside me: my father, Frank, Mom, Parker, even Mrs. Callahan and her terrible clipboard. I thought about the town, shrinking and expanding, filling up the empty spaces with the same old hopes.

Frank coughed, then raised his glass. “To Buckle.”

The night was warm around us as we drank, the porch light humming like an old song. Somewhere down the block, kids let off a firework: just one, bright and loud. The sparks illuminated the sky and dimmed like a burnt tree. And for a moment, I felt whole again.

STORY:
Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, Fractured Lit, Hobart, HAD, X-R-A-Y, and Maudlin House, among other journals. His stories have been selected or nominated for such anthologies as the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. He is currently at work on his first novel in Philadelphia and Amsterdam.

*

ART:
Nina Semczuk’s writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review, Sinking City Literary Journal, Coal Hill Review, and elsewhere. Her art, pottery, and comics can be found online and around the Hudson Valley.

---

Next Tuesday, we’ll feature a bonus interview with Sarp about this story.

---